raymac46 Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 I have one of those brutal old Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 710C printers which I used for years with Windows. It is the printing equivalent of a Winmodem - uses a protocol called PPA which gets most of the intelligent work done on the PC. It was supposed to reduce costs but really didn't and HP abandoned it years ago.It's not supported that well in Linux as you'd expect - however Mandriva 2009 does a terrific job of installing and configuring it. I have not been able to get it working with other distros - until today.With other distros, you can install it in CUPS all right - I did that with both Vector Linux and Mepis 8.0. The printer appears in the list, says it's ready to print but when you try you get: "user/lib/cups/filter/foomatic.rip failed"and no test page.After some research I found out that a package called pnm2ppa is needed to support printing on these PPA based printers. Mandriva installs it automagically I guess. The others do not. The package is available for Debian Lenny so I installed it for Mepis 8.0 and Bingo! A test page.Vector Linux does not have the package available bit I was able to download, build and install it from pnm2ppa.sourceforge.net. The printer now works on Vector Linux. Yes!You learn something new about Linux every day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 Good job.THanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 Woooooow . . . Ray, you're the man !!! Great hacking !!! . . . Big big kudo's to you !!! Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 Super Ray! Added them to the printer list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 2, 2009 Author Share Posted March 2, 2009 Super Ray! Added them to the printer list. Well I still prefer Mandriva especially for new users. Its system-config-printer is so nice. It installs one of these PPA printers without any messing about in the CLI or building packages. However if I have to use Vector Linux on an old machine, at least I can set up one of these strange printers with CUPS now.The best thing though is to have a conventional PCL Deskjet that is supported in HPLIP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Its system-config-printer is so nice I sure wish I'd had those results! I never did get my HP 5550 to print more than the first line or two then the paper hung in the printer for hours. Nothing printed, the lights just kept flashing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 3, 2009 Author Share Posted March 3, 2009 (edited) I sure wish I'd had those results! I never did get my HP 5550 to print more than the first line or two then the paper hung in the printer for hours. Nothing printed, the lights just kept flashing.Should work OK according to Open Printing. It's a fairly standard HP printer. Mandriva could not configure it? Edited March 3, 2009 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Mandriva nor Super Ubuntu. It was configured and started to print then "rested" and never print beyond the first line or two.If I had a real short document (like only one line) the printing was done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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